Dregan programmed the entry pad three days before they arrived.
He kept going back. Checking the light over the house floor. Moving one of the Prenellian pieces, a small woven figure of river grass and copper thread, from the corner table to a nook beside the window. The kitchen he left for Darna. The fitters installed the equipment, finished the surfaces, and started the cold storage. He did not arrange a single shelf. That was hers.
Jep sent word when they cleared the defensive ring. Dregan was at the dock when the transport came in.
Darna was first off the ramp. A bag hung from one shoulder. She wore her hair pinned up, like when she baked in her kitchen on Prenellia.
She saw him and crossed the dock, laughing and crying at the same time, then threw her arms around him and held on.
He hugged her back.
“Oh, look at you,” she said, stepping back, keeping her hands on his arms.
Jep came down the ramp slower. He held a case in each hand, his eyes moving down the dock and back, his jaw set. He set the cases down and gripped Dregan’s hand with both of his.
“Captain,” he said.
“Jep.”
Jep nodded once.
Dregan took them to their quarters first, in the rows behind the shops on the third tier. Two rooms and a sitting space, with a window that looked out over the corridor. Darna walked through it with her hands clasped in front of her, not touching anything, just looking. Jep checked the door locks. He checked them twice.
“The corridor has a GP post at each end,” Dregan told him. “The third tier is merchants and families. It’s not always quiet, but it’s safe.”
Jep nodded. Still calculating.
Darna turned from the window. “Tori. This is too much.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.”
“Then let it be too much.” He took her arm. “Let’s go see the restaurant.”
The house floor held ten tables. He kept the lighting low, adjustable, so Darna could change it. Two side alcoves, two tables each, sat curtained off from the main floor. Private, for dinners that happened on a Capitol Ship when people needed walls. Darna moved through the space, her eyes going to corners, to the placement of the tables, already building it in her mind.
She picked up the woven figure from the nook. Turned it over in her hands.
“Prenellian,” she said.
“There are a few pieces,” Dregan said. “If you want them. If you don’t, I’ll find another place for them.”
She set it back down carefully. “I want them.”
Jep measured the distance between tables with his eyes.
Dregan took them through to the kitchen.
Darna stopped in the doorway.
The kitchen was larger than any kitchen she ever worked in. Cold storage along the back wall. Two prep surfaces, one for her side and one for Jep’s, though they would have to decide which. A full bread station near the east wall with the proofing drawer she mentioned to Dregan once, years ago in passing.
She walked the perimeter. She did not say anything for a long time.
Then she saw the alcove.
It was off the south side of the kitchen, half-hidden behind the cold storage turn. A table, handmade. The carpenter, a man from the third tier, came from a family three generations on the Leviathan. Dregan met with him twice to get the dimensions right and the wood grain the way he wanted it. A bench on one side, three chairs on the other. Room for staff dinners. A seat for every person in the kitchen, at a table that was theirs.
Darna put her hand on the surface of the table.
Her fingers spread across the grain.
“Tori.”
“For kitchen dinners,” he said. “And for family.”
She turned around. Her eyes filled. One tear ran down the side of her cheek. She crossed the kitchen and put her hand flat on his chest, looking up at his face.
“Thank you. The table, the restaurant.” Her fingers curled into his shirt. “For everything. Thank you.”
She hugged him again.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said. “You and Jep were there for me. Through the worst of it.”
She smiled, patted his chest, and sat down at the table. He took the seat beside her.
“I saw your mother before we left,” she said. “She is well looked after. She knows she is loved.”
He covered her hand with his. “I know.”
They sat like that for a moment. Then Jep said, from the doorway, “The bread station is good.” Darna laughed, pulled back, and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
Dregan told them what he could about the ship. The rhythms of it, the tiers, where the markets were, who ran what on each tier. Jep asked precise questions and Dregan gave precise answers. Darna listened with her chin in her hand, her eyes on the door to the house floor.
“I brought on a new soldier,” Dregan said. “Cherndan. The first through selection in years. She’s young. Capable. She needed to be twice as good to make an all-Prenellian team, and she is.”
Darna looked at him.
“What is her name?” she asked.
“Ensign Flerat.”
She nodded slowly. “And she is good.”
“She is.”
Jep refilled Dregan’s cup without being asked.
When Dregan got up to go, Darna stood and looked toward the bread station.
“I want to cook,” she said. “Before we open. I want to cook a meal in there.”
“Then do it.”
“Will you stay?”
“I’ll stay.”
She smiled. Then she crossed to the prep surfaces, opening drawers, learning where everything was.
Dregan sat back down. Jep took the chair across from him.
“Thank you.” Jep glanced at Darna in the kitchen. Then he looked at his hands on the table. “There was a man. From one of her old cases. Fifteen years back. She broke him and his whole network with him. We thought that was the end of it.”
“It never is,” Dregan said.
“No.” Jep turned his cup a quarter turn. “He got out eight months ago. We didn’t know. Started asking questions in the neighborhood. Subtle at first. Then not.”
“Why didn’t she contact me?”
Jep looked at him. “You know why.”
Dregan nodded.
“She wanted to handle it herself. But she forgets we are not that young anymore,” Jep said. “I wasn’t going to wait for her to remember.”
He looked over at Darna in the kitchen. She ran her hand along the bottom of a pan, testing its heft. The lines around his eyes softened.
“She doesn’t know how much I know,” he said. “About those years. She told you the stories. She never told me all of them. I didn’t need the stories. I just needed to know when to make the call.”
He looked back at his hands.
“Thank you for answering.”
“Always.”
Dregan sat there longer than he meant to. Darna in the kitchen, the soft percussion of pots and drawers. Her humming a song from the old neighborhood, one he half-recognized.
Jep watched Darna. Quiet. Steady.
Dregan was thirty-four years old. He had a ship, a crew, and a posting on the most defended vessel in the galaxy. He did what he set out to do, most of it. They were here now, safe, with Darna already cooking in a kitchen that was hers.
His shoulders tightened anyway.
From the kitchen, Darna started to sing.